Social Distortion

Tara Llanes's spinal cord injury didn't fundamentally change who she is, but it massively altered the way she navigates through life. And no, we're not talking about the chair.

"I had qualified fastest and was feeling really good on the course, but it was tricky. And that section, I think there were [only] three of us that were jumping it. Every time I came up to it, I had butterflies. The jumps were so close together and they were all different lengths with different size lips and landings. It was like six in a row, and if you made a mistake it was going to really suck. It was a good course. It was long. It had a lot to it. It was technical. It was fast.


I got in the gate for the semi-final against Jill [Kintner], and the guy was giving us timeframe. I remember standing up and thinking, ah fuck, I'm not ready yet. But I'm like, forget it, I'm fine, I'm fine, just go. So the gate opens, and right when you come out you've got two pedal strokes and there's a double. I remember being totally off balance as I hit that. I hit the next jump, cased the crap out of it and was just getting farther behind. Everything was off and I should have just sat down and rolled through. I didn't because I never quit, no matter what, because you never know if the other person is going to crash.


So we get down to that section and she is so far ahead of me it's retarded. And I already knew in my head, ok, you're going to have to make this one up. She's going to have a 1.5 advantage. I'm thinking that as I'm coming to this section, and I'm thinking, don't jump it, no just jump it... And that's the problem. If you're that indecisive, don't do it, but I did. I landed two of them, hit the third, came down and I needed to pull up for the roller and hit the backside to get that extra pump to hit the next double, and I didn't pull up. So I sort of jumped off of it instead of getting backside and just. . . headfirst, just straight into the face of the next double. My hands weren't off the bar or anything. Just straight into it with my head. I was probably going 15, maybe 20 miles per hour. I didn't get knocked out, and I remember rolling back down the face of the jump. I was on my back and I remember being really, really hot. One of the course builders and Bryn [Atkinson, another racer] were there straight away. I opened my eyes and I didn't move for a minute because I was stunned from everything that had happened.


Then I went to move and I remember my arms moved. The medics asked if I could wiggle my toes, and I'm like, 'Yep.' And in my head, they're moving and I remember the guy saying, 'Yeah, ok, they moved,' but I was in so much pain it was ridiculous. It felt like the lower half of my body was disconnected, like it was laying on something. I kept asking, 'Am I on something? Am I laying on something?' And they're like, 'No, you're flat on the ground.' I could see the look on some peoples' faces, though, and I kept telling Bryn, 'I need to walk again, I have to ride again,' and I was crying. . . I must have scared the shit out of him. I didn't know what to do or what to say. From the amount of pain I was in and that the guys were asking me again and again to move my feet, I knew the severity. I felt like someone had taken a bat and beaten the crap out of me."
—Tara Llanes's account of her September 1, 2007 crash at the Jeep King of the Mountains series final in Beaver Creek, Colorado


Now 32 years old, Llanes was raised by her mother in Brea, California, a middle-class town of about 35,000 in northern Orange County. Counting a shopping mall and the 57 Freeway as the town's most noteworthy features, after its palpable suburban anonymity, Brea exists in the shadow of better-known and more affluent cities to the south. Basketball and BMX counted as Llanes' athletic passions prior to her 12-year professional career as a downhill and 4X mountain bike racer, which included several national championships, world cup and world championship podiums, and a slalom win at worlds in 1998. Known for being open, generous and engaging, she is slightly introverted around strangers—and modest, the first to admit her mild discomfort with the quasi-rockstar attention often bestowed by fans.


Having recovered well over her career from fractures and soft-tissue damage typical for a downhiller, and also more traumatic injuries, including collapsed lungs, Llanes had no way to know when she hit the ground at Beaver Creek that day that the effects of the impact would be felt in every aspect of her life. Despite being aware that she had sustained incredible trauma, she recalls her confidence going into the hospital: "I knew things weren't working when I crashed, but when I woke up from my surgery, I assumed that I was going to be ok."


This time Llanes's recovery wouldn't match her past experiences. She'd fractured bones in her neck, but worse, she had fractured and dislocated her twelfth thoracic and first lumbar vertebrae (about hip level), which caused considerable damage to her spinal cord, resulting in paralysis. After initial surgery and stabilization at Denver Health Hospital, where she was told that it was at best highly unlikely that she would ever walk again and at worst outright impossible, she transferred to Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado, a leading facility in rehabilitation and research for people with spinal cord injuries.


As Llanes was about to learn, her challenges went beyond the enduring physical trauma, medical care and rehabilitation, not to mention paying for everything and dealing with insurance. She would also have to learn new ways to navigate a world built for the able-bodied—all of which is overwhelming and largely beyond comprehension for even the most empathetic able-bodied people. Most can guess at the medical realities and extrapolate from there about rehabilitation, insurance fights and expenses. Likewise, for some of the physical adaptations and mourning the loss of ability to do things that used to come easily. But few can anticipate the social challenges imposed. These are easier to understand through the filter of Llanes's post-injury experiences with her coach and both her former and current girlfriend—especially when she describes her experiences in day-to-day interactions with strangers.


What now, Coach?
As a side effect of huge amounts of travel required of world cup-level downhillers, racers typically end up with a broad range of personal and professional connections and friendships all over the world. Often, these relationships are renewed only once or twice a year at a specific event or two. Another effect of the travel is that racers typically forge intense relationships with competitors, coaches, mechanics, team managers, sponsors, members of the media and others on the circuit. These friendships and the routine of racing are among the only constants in an otherwise nomadic life. Picture a roving, global summer camp for adults who have great bike-handling skills.


It was in this context that Llanes got to know James Hererra. With a background in BMX racing, Hererra started his coaching career in that discipline and was primarily focused on providing strength-training services. But as his personal interests grew to include road and mountain bike riding and other activities, his coaching abilities and offerings expanded to match, eventually leading to a job as director of coaching at Carmichael Training Systems—the position he held when he met Llanes.


After chatting with Llanes at a few events, Hererra gave her a standing offer to help with her coaching. It took a few seasons, but after Llanes moved on from one coach and trained on her own for a season, she came to Hererra for greater structure and guidance. Their friendship grew quickly from there. "With [Tara], coaching was never really work," Hererra says. "We would talk on the phone a couple times a day. Sometimes it wasn't even about training. We became best friends."


When Hererra heard that BMX would be included in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, he urged Llanes to consider racing on 20-inch wheels for the first time in seven years to try for a spot on the U.S. team. Initially, he recalls, she wasn't that interested, but a confluence of events, including a call from Mike King, the head of the USA Cycling's BMX program, brought her around.


Llanes started racing BMX, but she struggled. "She wound up cracking a bone in her foot and breaking her wrist twice. There were all these injuries that kept popping up and I think they were almost all BMX related," Hererra says. "That whole season, it was just injury, injury, injury. There seemed to be all these warning signs that this might not be that good."


By the time the Beaver Creek event came up, Llanes and Hererra had decided not to pursue the Olympic slot, and had essentially agreed that she would retire at the end of the season, maybe doing just the Jeep series the following year to stay involved with the sport. But the primary focus was to finish the series. Hererra wryly describes Llanes's crash at Beaver Creek as being a massively outsized version of the proverbial "last run of the day on which you fuck yourself up for the entire year."


Post-crash, Hererra threw himself into what friends and coaches do: help, support, counsel. He terminated several projects so he could spend more time with Llanes. He helped her raise money to offset medical costs by spearheading the creation of her website,, and running an auction at Interbike. And he contributed to the research and discussion on the seemingly countless decisions about rehabilitation and her adaptation to life with a spinal cord injury. "He worked on so many things for me that I wasn't even aware of," she says.


"At first, all the work of the website, the auction, that was the easy part," says Hererra. "It's when the dust settled [after Llanes moved back home to California] that I really had time to think. Was there something I should have looked out for that would have told me she shouldn't be doing this? I was beating myself up about it. Somehow, I felt that I should have picked up on something." His close friendship with Llanes compounded his angst. "This thing hit me way more than if it was an athlete that I didn't have that connection with. I still would have been rocked, but this is just different."


"It got really uncomfortable. I felt like I couldn't talk about certain things with her. I remember having conversations with her and saying 'I just went out for a run and my legs are sore and it sucks,' or, 'It was really cold and it sucked,' or 'It was really windy.' And every time you say something like that, you go, 'Oh my God, she would trade places with me in a heartbeat. She would love to go out on a shitty run or a windy, freezing bike ride.'"


"It never should have gotten that way," Hererra says. He recalls reading Gimp, a book by Mark Zupan, star of the movie Murderball, about his experience with spinal cord injury. "He wrote about all the stuff that he was thinking when the injury happened, and everything afterward. His girlfriend dumped him and just all the turmoil he had with his parents and with his friends. Everybody was avoiding picking up the phone because they didn't want to say the wrong thing. And I remember thinking, I'm not going to be that guy. I'm going to be the one guy that doesn't go through all this bullshit and have it be weird between us. She's my best friend and I'm going to be bigger than that."


"But two days between phone calls turned into a week and a week turned into two weeks, and two weeks turned into three weeks and that turned into not returning her phone calls. I didn't know what to say. The biggest part of it was that I felt responsible. I felt like one of the reasons she was in a chair, which just made it impossible for me to talk to her."


"And she went through leaving a message that was really sweet—'Hey you. Where you been? What's going on?'—to, 'This is bullshit. You're my best friend. What are you doing? Where the fuck are you when I need you?' I needed to just find my balls, and I couldn't make myself. My wife would ask me, 'Hey, how's Tara?' And I'd say, 'She's cool.' I was lying."


"And one day, the doorbell rings. My wife opens the door and I hear, 'Hey, Tara.' And I'm like, is she joking? And I get up and walk over and [Tara's] sitting on my doorstep. And she's looking at me like, this is what I had to do? Her buddy drove her here. They jumped into a van and drove here, and this is a twenty-something-hour drive. So I finally had to come clean and say that I felt responsible, that I'm sorry. I don't even know how to explain it. I just felt like I had a hand in the situation."


"I just looked at him like, how on earth could you ever think that?" Llanes says. "I was hurt and I was pissed that he could think that. Ultimately, I said, 'None of this is your fault. None of this is my fault. It was an accident.'" She adds, "[His silence], oh my God, it tore me up. I didn't understand what happened. I thought I did something wrong or said something. I think he just cared about me so much, that it was hard for him to see."


Hererra continues: "[Since then] we've been talking once a week or so. It's not at the same level that it used to be, but the trust and the understanding and the friendship is there. There's still some work to be done and maybe that's just time, but I think all the feelings of anxiety or, on my part, blame, are gone."


Just Add Pressure
Llanes met Polly Neves through a mutual friend at a Southern California club. She describes an immediate attraction. But they didn't have a chance to get to know each other better until coincidence put them both in Las Vegas on the same weekend—Llanes for Interbike, Neves to visit friends. They all ended up at the New World Disorder video premier, and the relationship grew from there.


"When things were good, we thought we were going to be together forever," Llanes says. The partnership lasted more than five years, including nearly two years after Llanes's injury. "We loved each other and still do. In hindsight, I think we were better friends than we were partners, but at the time we just didn't think that. She will always be a part of my life. You bond with somebody on a different level when something like this happens."


Of their eventual breakup, Llanes explains, "There were some issues that had come up before my injury that needed to be dealt with, and then when the injury happened, that got pushed to the side. I hope and I think that the breakup didn't have to do with the injury. But I can only imagine how much of a toll it took on her, being at the hospital for weeks straight, flying there every weekend for three and a half months. That's such a lack of sleep, and then trying to be there for me 100 percent and doing so many things for me because I couldn't just yet. I know it wears you down. I didn't want it to, but it just does."


"I knew we were having problems, I wasn't oblivious to that. It was one of those things we both kind of knew but neither of us said. [Still] when she said she needed to take some time apart, I didn't see it coming at all. I was like, 'Oh my God, what's going to happen?' I was scared. I was really in a vulnerable place, where I was like, 'Don't leave me, what am I going to do? ' I was still trying to deal with the accident, not being on my own. In hindsight, that's why I wanted to stay in the relationship. Deep down, it wasn't because I thought we were supposed to be together."


While Llanes's crash may have been a factor in extending her relationship, Lester Butt, PhD, director of the psychology department at Craig Hospital, describes the effect of spinal cord injury on couples as immense. "[For] people who have established a relationship, and then an injury occurs, there's oftentimes more volcanic consequences, because couples have a dance. You know what the music is. You know where to step. If it's a good relationship, it's mutually supportive and complementary. After an injury, roles change. The dynamics of the relationship change, intimacy can change. So when you talk about dissolution of relationships [post injury], it's at a higher level than the already high level within the able-bodied population. But to say that you can't have a stable relationship post injury is absolutely fallacious. There are unique challenges, but can they thrive? Absolutely."


A Matter of Priorities
A past Canadian National DH Champion, 39-year-old Elladee Brown once stood on the second step of the world championship podium and was featured in a host of videos, from her role as an instructor in the West Coast Style series to appearances in Kranked 3 and other films dating as far back as Tread. A Vancouver, B.C., resident who has since retired from racing, Brown possesses an easy smile and the affable, outgoing nature that seems so prevalent among Commonwealthers, particularly those given to gravity racing. Still active in the bike industry, Brown runs a sales business representing Shimano, Marin Bikes and Nutcase helmets.


Llanes first met Brown 15 years ago at a race in Vail, Colorado. The two remained friendly, hanging out at events as they traveled from race to race. Both recognized the potential for more than friendship, but nothing materialized. "I think maybe after we met, either she was in a relationship or I was," Llanes recalls. "Els retired in 1997, so after that we saw each other less. It was limited, probably only a handful of times. There was an attraction, but we just never said anything to each other."


Fittingly, Llanes and Brown were both in relationships when they saw each other checking in at Interbike last fall. They talked and exchanged numbers, keeping in regular contact and building a friendship that led to them helping each other through the breakups of their respective relationships. Finally, they connected this spring when Llanes traveled to Whistler for a ski trip; they've been seeing each other since.


"I love being able to talk to her about somebody, and she knows exactly who I'm talking about," says Llanes. "I'm making stupid little bike noises, but she knows what I mean, and other people I've dated are looking at me like I have four heads. I love being around her, and I love the mutual friends and life that we've had."


"Finding the person you are meant to be with, the way it happens in life, is the way it was meant to be. I don't think anybody can try to force things. And the way things have come full circle, I mean, Elladee and I met 15 years ago. We've been joking lately that we just needed some space. We're both sort of dumbfounded at the whole situation."


"I'm going to be moving up to Vancouver [to be with Brown] hopefully within the next three to four months. I've been in some really great relationships with some great, beautiful people, but this is totally different. Making a decision to move to Vancouver was not a hard one. If she lived in Ohio, then maybe it would be different. . . [laughs]."


Butt says bonds forged post injury can be easier to maintain. "If you meet somebody who has an injury and form a new relationship, it's based on a present dance. It doesn't have to be recrafted into something new. So in some senses, people know what they are getting into."


Still, if not for Llanes's reevaluation of her priorities, the opportunity to develop and maintain a long-distance relationship may never have come about. "What you have in your life are your friendships," Llanes says. "I wasn't mature enough to see that years ago. I mean, I had friends and they were great, but I was more like, I need to have a house, I need to have a car, I need to have this and that. . . You know what? You need shelter, let's be realistic, but friendships to me mean more than anything. I'll drop anything if a friend of mine needs me, it's not even a question."


This tracks with what Butt frequently sees at Craig: "I think after injuries, people who are psychologically insightful and perceptive often reprioritize their worlds such that they really understand what's important in life. It's not the Bimmer. It's not the house in the Caribbean. It's love. It's friends. It's family. That's it."


Everybody Goes to Starbucks
One of the more pervasive changes in Llanes's life involves otherwise random encounters in public. "If I cruise into a Starbucks," Llanes says, "they don't see my outfit and think, that's cute. They see me in a wheelchair. Some people are overly gracious. Some people are like, holy shit, what do I do? A lot of people automatically think you've got some mental issue."


"People just don't know or are not aware. They're trying to figure out what's wrong. In the beginning, I felt super uncomfortable and would get really defensive about it. Now, I understand that they don't understand. I'll say something so they realize, it's fine, don't be on your toes."


"I've had super gracious people who, rather than watch me go around in circles because I can only use one hand and still carry my coffee, are like, 'Hey, can I carry that for you?' I want to do things on my own, but sometimes when someone offers, I'll take their help, yeah."


"One time, there was an older woman staring at me. I could feel it. I looked over at her, and she wouldn't look away, and I'm like, 'What's going on?' And she walks up to me and—she's been watching me the whole time while I order my coffee and roll over to get it—and she says, 'I just want to tell you, you are so beautiful.' And I felt like such a jerk. I was like, why is she staring at me? It's just because I'm in a chair. It's so hard to tell what people are thinking."


Kenny Hossack, a counselor by training and spokes-person for Craig Hospital, says there's an irony in these situations. "Part of [how Tara is received] is up to Tara," he says. "It depends on the attitude she has and projects outward. If she can make people comfortable, if she can project laughter and warmth, then that's what she will get back." In other words, many people will be uncomfortable around Llanes simply because she uses a wheelchair, and the burden of overcoming this discomfort largely rests with her. "If somebody asks from a good place about how I do something or if they can help," she says, "I'll totally be open with it because I want people to learn. I want people to understand and get it and not be so misunderstood."


Some of Llanes's developed understanding and patience in these situations likely stems from one of her pre-injury experiences. She recalls, "I remember seeing [paraplegic athlete] John Davis and thinking to myself, holy shit, not only how does he make it through his days, but how is he smiling all the time? How could you be happy? I thought, oh my God, if I was ever in this position, I couldn't do it. People say that to me: 'I don't know how you do it.' And now I say, 'You know what? You never know what you can do until you are in that position.'"

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